Samuel Pepys: The Diarist

The British Resistance
January 30, 2014

Some might think Samuel Pepys started it all.  To bring you up to speed Wiki informs me Samuel Pepys was born on 23 February 1633 near Fleet Street in London, the son of a tailor. He was educated at St Paul’s School in London and Cambridge University.  After graduating, Pepys was employed as secretary to Edward Montagu, a distant relative who was a councillor of state during the Cromwellian protectorate and later served Charles II.  In 1655, Pepys married 15-year-old Elizabeth Marchant de Saint-Michel, daughter of a Huguenot exile.

He is famous for his diaries, which cover the years 1659 – 1669, but also enjoyed a successful career as a naval administrator and Member of Parliament.  Pepys began his diary on 1 January 1660.  It is written in a form of shorthand, with names in longhand.  It ranges from private remarks, including revelations of infidelity to detailed observations of events in 17th century England – such as the plague of 1665, the Great Fire of London and Charles II’s coronation – and some of the key figures of the era, including Sir Christopher Wren and Sir Isaac Newton.  Fear of losing his eyesight prompted Pepys to stop writing the diary in 1669.  He never actually went blind.

You might ask is this leading anywhere particularly.  Interestingly enough it is about freedom of speech.  Most people in Pepys day were uneducated and many could not read or write. There were educated people who did question the world’s creation or facts in the bible and were put to death or sent into exile.  Our modern Heretics or Doubters are the ones who question ‘questionable’ events that took place in WW2 and who have been imprisoned in Austrian Jails for doing so. In Pepys day the educated minority were the clergy and children of the aristocracy or successful Merchants.  I do not know if keeping diaries was a big thing generally but Pepys certainly gained a lot of notoriety with his scribbling’s.

We fast forward 355 years and most of us can now read and write unlike in Samuels’s day.  There is a lot more risk for commentators writing about contemporary times on pain of infringing a multitude of laws enacted to protect people who on hearing the truth might experience discomfort, upset or offence causing hot flushes and personal stress.  Perceived threat of Racial, ethnic and/or religious prejudice, or who unthinkingly challenge the medically challenged or infringe any one of a thousand phobias which were not visibly apparent in Pepys day, I can only assume the reason being that most races in Pepys day were not forced to live in a stifling, dangerous Multi-racial society, a society where governments who cannot face the truth make a decree of outlawing it.

“Coming out” was not common in Pepys day, they preferred to “stay in” if you follow my meaning.  It is Dissenters and Doubters that run the risk of incarceration, naively flirting with the luxury of what was once known as “Freedom of speech” they now find they are the hunted as a Mr Snowden and his revelations of wholesale spying by the American intelligence agencies on its own people and as did a Mr Ernst Zundel and a Mr David Irving will also attest arrested for the terrible, unforgiving crime of questioning past history.

We have been here before with the Spanish Inquisition.  It is said history repeats itself.  Realists see life as black and white, it is the truth or it is a lie. History immortalises in times past, brave English women like Boadicea, but we also have contemporary brave English women of the 21st century named Emma West who saw a glaring anomaly and naively or not voiced her concern; she was arrested along with her child.

For Bloggers, their words are not written and manipulated surgically to fullfil a political agenda known as brainwashing, they are the modern day Diarists, they also risk pain of imprisonment and have been forced to flee into exile just for telling the truth.  They write it as they see it as did Samuel Pepys.  I admit there are bloggers that write what they see as the truth but not necessarily paying too much attention or caring of the facts.  Their critics refer to them as Conspiracy Theorists.

I believe that the modern day Internet Diarist, the Blogger, will have his or her views archived and 300 years into the future readers of history will understand how the madness started and how it unfolded, who were the enemies and who were the traitors.  The bloggers will write the history, hopefully the truth. Their allegiance is to no-one.  In three hundred years’ time will anyone read my words?

Pepys died in Clapham on the outskirts of London on 26 May 1703, “Three Hundred and Twelve years prior to the colonisation of London that left the English people a minority in their Capital City.” Meanwhile, have no fear it will be the Bloggers who will have chronicled the names of our enemies and our traitors.

Multiculturalism has made us so tolerant that we now tolerate the intolerant.